Kongregate, PowerUp Rewards, and You page 3

I’m not an US user, but I’m personally ok with the Powerup Reward system.
Instead I don’t agree with the “double points” for the badge of the day; seriously why do we need such an overflow of points? Thanks to those, the Kongregate level definitely becomes a “who has been more on this Website” than an indicator of player skills. Also, the level cap will be now easily reachable in no time.

Do you at least plan to separate pure badge points and community points to limit this inconvenient?

This is great, there are so many great things for PowerUp!

I really doubt 12.4 extra points a day (Average points of all badges minus impossibles) will make the level cap much easier to hit.

The badges last 24 hours. Fair for every timezone.

Uh, no. The first one didn’t.

Some impossible badges are very possible to do within a day. Streamline and Pandemic 2 come to mind.

Tell that to my strategy which took one person 10 minutes and myself four full days. Nevertheless, even if it’s possible, impossibles are generally only reachable for a select few people. These “challenges” are meant to be for everyone, just like quests.

The first one didn’t, but all future ones will, and it was only 5 points. That’s the same amount of points that was given out to users for celebrating Kongbaby (the first)‘s 1st birthday. And was deducted from other users for the opposite. Not really a big deal. Jim’s mother got 10,000 free points on her account. 5 points seems fairly insignificant now.

Pandemic 2 is too ridiculously luckbased to ever be used as a BOTD or Quest badge. But Streamline, and a few I mentioned in the other thread would work. And you say they’re meant to be for everyone, but then what do the hardcore gamers do? It’s no fun not having a challenge. Mixing it up with the odd impossible BoTD (Hell, 3-4 a year would be fine by me) would truly allow for every gamer.

and it was only 5 points

That’s not an argument. The denying of many users by only putting it up for a few hours is timezoneism. It’s not so much about the points, it’s about the fact it was put up for far too little time.

Oh, and you can buy stuff with the points you get from them. Sillyme.

And you say they’re meant to be for everyone, but then what do the hardcore gamers do? It’s no fun not having a challenge. Mixing it up with the odd impossible BoTD (Hell, 3-4 a year would be fine by me) would truly allow for every gamer.

As long as they’re achievable within the average hours a normal person can play within that day, sure. I’d say very few fall under that. Streamline, perhaps, and Dolphin Olympics 2.

Yay! PowerUp Rewards points for playing on Kong. Now, I need to simply get a Rewards account from the nearest GameStop which is a trek and a half across my state. Lamesauce.

It sucks for me that I can’t stockpile these points until I get an activated account, but shit happens. Nifty little feature. I can’t wait to actually be able to use it, whenever it is that I travel down yonder again.

Oh wow this is awesome, I hope it comes to Canada (and Europe and Australia) so I can use them. But while waiting I can do the badge of the day! :)

I am utterly and seriously upset. I’ve made it a point to get every single challenge and badge since signing up, and suddenly there’s a YHTBTR daily badge that gets thrown up, and I never even SAW this thing yesterday (even on the badge page) — now I’ve missed it. I only see the Cursed Treasures skill badge. I also had massive connection issues yesterday (which Greg was aware of).

Originally posted by Sellyme:

I really doubt 12.4 extra points a day (Average points of all badges minus impossibles) will make the level cap much easier to hit.

It will; let’s suppose badges are around from just 3 years (it’s a little more, but I’ll consider less time since the rate of badged games is currently higher).
Since there are currently 24k points just from badges, that means that from the start of Kongregate the badgemakers have released badges which are worth around 8000 points a year.
Considering an average of 11 points a day for a daily badge (it’s a bit more, but I suppose the daily badge will feature less hard badges overall), that means that daily badges will award around 4000 points a year.
That means that for users that are already subscribed to Kong the badges are worth 1.5 times more than a person that will subscribe in the future (which is just plain unfair).

In my case that would mean 10k extra points, bumping me up from level 56 to level 63.

Originally posted by MrRubix:

I am utterly and seriously upset. I’ve made it a point to get every single challenge and badge since signing up, and suddenly there’s a YHTBTR daily badge that gets thrown up, and I never even SAW this thing yesterday (even on the badge page) — now I’ve missed it. I only see the Cursed Treasures skill badge. I also had massive connection issues yesterday (which Greg was aware of).

Same here, Haven’t missed a challenge, although I have missed a few badges. I was even on Kongregate yesterday and I never saw it at all. Looks like I’ll have to keep coming back every single day…

Originally posted by Hayato_Sakashi:

Thanks for the extra five points=D

^I love it! Especially since I have almost 90% of the badges. But it bums be out that I have to sign up in store; I won’t be able to go to GameStop for a few more days because I’m out of town visiting family :)

Hooray, another set of numbers to make bigger! …But I have to actually talk to a person for this one. Damn.

There is a GameStop conveniently close by, but I’m just imagining how this is going to go down. “Yeah, I’m not interested in buying anything in your store except for nabbing this here account card with which I can collect invisible numbers. I haven’t purchased a PC program in physical form since 2005. Thanks, digital distribution! Byyyyye.”

I was wondering if the Kong admin staff could help out on this one as I haven’t been able to figure it out from the rewards website. What exactly is the definition of a “US resident” for the purpose of the program? If I am a legal US citizen with a US PO box who is currently living in Canada, would I still be eligible to sign up if I crossed the border and provided this info?

(the trip would be a bit of a let down if this were not the case)

Also – if I were to get an account but access Kong from Canada, is there a way that I would be able to view the “rewards” portion of the website? Or is everywhere outside of the US totally blocked from seeing this?

Originally posted by JamesBont:

I was wondering if the Kong admin staff could help out on this one as I haven’t been able to figure it out from the rewards website. What exactly is the definition of a “US resident” for the purpose of the program? If I am a legal US citizen with a US PO box who is currently living in Canada, would I still be eligible to sign up if I crossed the border and provided this info?

(the trip would be a bit of a let down if this were not the case)

Also – if I were to get an account but access Kong from Canada, is there a way that I would be able to view the “rewards” portion of the website? Or is everywhere outside of the US totally blocked from seeing this?

I think the answer is yes but let me ask someone at Gamestop about that, wouldn’t want you to make the trip in vain. You can hit the main landing pages/linking pages from Canada: www.kongregate.com/poweruprewards though the other messaging on the site about it won’t appear.

That’s not an argument. The denying of many users by only putting it up for a few hours is timezoneism. It’s not so much about the points, it’s about the fact it was put up for far too little time.

We picked that time because it was late enough that our traffic would be lower (note that the whole site had to be taken down for this), but early enough that we would still be awake.

We considered having the first badge last for 26 hours instead of 2 hours, but that would technically mean that it was the badge of the day twice, so there would be weirdness with people able to earn it on both days, and it wouldn’t even solve the problem of some people being unable to earn it on the first day due to time zone issues.

There isn’t really a better way we could’ve done this, sorry!

you can easily fix that by signing up for the program at your nearest GameStop.

Bleh. There’s no GameStops near my college, and I won’t be able to go to the one near my house until May. Oh well, I can wait.

I just thought of another thing. You don’t have to use your PUR points you get at Kong, at Kong. You could get PS3, 360, or GS cards. And since BotD is free, that’s essentially free cards. :O

That’s the idea! :) And don’t fret about us – it all works out financially in the end. We’re just happy that part of that involves doing cool things for you guys.

Do you at least plan to separate pure badge points and community points to limit this inconvenient?

This has indeed been something we’ve been thinking about for a while, but double points earned through Badge of the Day would probably still be counted as points earned through gameplay. We’ve done double points challenges before and the points are still earned by earning a badge, so while having to earn it on a different day does add another component, it’s still not really on par with, say, referrals.

…But I have to actually talk to a person for this one. Damn.

Just doing our civic duty to get you all out into the sunlight every now and again. ;)

What exactly is the definition of a “US resident” for the purpose of the program?

Good question! And I see I was ninja’d. :( I’ll add my 2 cents in anyway, though. The Powers That Be are telling me that if you have a US PO box, that should be more than adequate. I can’t actually guarantee this 100%, though, so before you go trekking across the countryside, perhaps you could shoot an e-mail to powerup@gamestop.com. :)

Also – if I were to get an account but access Kong from Canada, is there a way that I would be able to view the “rewards” portion of the website?

Right now, the way we have it set up is that the country we record is the one associated with the IP from which you sign up for the site, and it doesn’t get updated. So while you can see those pages that Emily posted, you won’t be able to get the targeted ads/pages/etc.

Is there seriously no way to earn the foregone YHTBTR badge? I’m seriously bummed that my 100% collection of 3-plus-years-going (standard badges, card challenges, mobile badges, sponsored challenges, medals, etc) now has a gap in it.

EDIT: Apparently not. I will no longer buy Kreds on this site again — I’m seriously miffed over this. I know it’s small, but it’s still part of a full collection that I can no longer claim rights to. There should have been some sort of announcement or warning for it. I would have found some way to log on otherwise.

May have missed the answer to this question: Am I able to redeem power points for every current- already purchased kred?

Originally posted by Conquerer95:

Maye have missed the answer to this question: Am I able to redeem power points for every current- already purchased kred?

Nope, it’s been said that only from now will points be awarded for Kred purchases, not past ones.

Originally posted by 123aaa789:

Originally posted by Conquerer95:

Maye have missed the answer to this question: Am I able to redeem power points for every current- already purchased kred?

Nope, it’s been said that only from now will points be awarded for Kred purchases, not past ones.

That and you need you’re PUR account activated first as well.

I just thought of another thing that was in question when this same concept was asked multiple times for Kong points giving Kreds. How do we prevent hackers from getting free and easy PUR points?

Could anyone post some examples of the rewards/prices for stuff? I see that you have to make an account before viewing them, and didn’t really want to yet til I know what is offered. I’m curious to know how much kreds cost too :^) I figure that in a year, badge of the day plus bonus points would add up to about 5,000 reward points, and wondered what the value of this is.

I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and I’ve come up with a possibly better way to do things. How about the staff make it so instead of “the daily badge”, it could be 3 badges per week. That way users have time to plan out when they have time to get the badges, instead of only giving a day. Apparantly badges of the day could be hard badges; many hard badges take much longer than a day to get.

Originally posted by uzzbuzz:

I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and I’ve come up with a possibly better way to do things. How about the staff make it so instead of “the daily badge”, it could be 3 badges per week. That way users have time to plan out when they have time to get the badges, instead of only giving a day. Apparantly badges of the day could be hard badges; many hard badges take much longer than a day to get.

Yeah, I brought up during one of our meetings that World of Warcraft is transitioning to something similar to this. It’s definitely an interesting idea.

There will be some hard badges in the rotation, but I’ll be careful to steer clear of the longer ones, and possibly put more of them on weekends or something.